


and now my eyes are closing

by iwrotethisat3am



Series: a light in the room [3]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:00:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24785029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwrotethisat3am/pseuds/iwrotethisat3am
Summary: It’s nighttime on the Resolute, on a battlefield somewhere, on a cold, distant, nameless moon. Rex and Ahsoka are cuddled up in sleep.
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex/Ahsoka Tano
Series: a light in the room [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1791976
Comments: 17
Kudos: 218





	1. all the years

The comets raked down around the sides of the ship, sending up bits of plasma and comet where they connected the shields. Blue and red plumed up and streaked behind the destroyer in a beautiful cascade of fire and ice. 

Ahsoka wasn’t so concentrated on the beautiful part as she was on the terrifying part, though. 

Maybe it was all the battles she’d fought through recently. Maybe it was lack of sleep catching up with her. But the ordinarily fearless-to-a-fault Padawan Ahsoka Tano was nervous — okay, okay, okay, scared — of a simple storm. Logically, she knew the shields would protect them, and logically, she knew it was time to get some rest, recuperate from her travels, maybe meditate some. All the good Jedi stuff. 

And yet sitting in her room felt like too much for her. The uneven crashing sound and whistling of the vents reminded her too much of battle, and that, and the storm on its own, were all too unfamiliar. She couldn’t rest for nerves and the unreasoning worry that the comets would crash through the roof of the ship. So she went to the hangar, where at least she could watch them fall, and be assured by the sight of the ray shield that the ship was safe.

Anakin was on the bridge, with Rex and Obi-Wan and Cody — and her trooper friends were asleep or completing their duties — and she still felt too new to comfortably interrupt them for their attention. So she sat alone. Ahsoka perched on the ship she and Anakin had ridden from Christophsis to Tatooine, tucked her swinging legs together, and sat at the fore of the hangar, watching the icy bloom of the comets with a narrow and distrusting gaze, quaking when the occasional one came a tad too close or screeched too loudly. 

The hours whiled by in the empty hangar. Every time her tired body came close to drifting off, pulsing anxiety shot through her again, and she started and stared with wide eyes at the falling comets. Some troopers probably came in while she was sitting there, but if they did they did not choose to speak to her, nor could she see them from her vantage point.

This dim thought was circulating round her brain as she nodded off into dreams again, until another loud comet bumped fiery white against the ray shield and she jerked awake with a hand halfway pulling out her lightsaber.

“Commander?” said a cautious voice.

Ahsoka swiveled round to view, through bleary eyes, a concerned-looking Captain Rex peering up at her.

“Oh, Captain Rex,” she said, trying to appear more awake, crossing her legs uncomfortably. “I thought you were at a briefing.”

“That was several hours ago, Commander. I’ve been . . . making the rounds. With all due respect — you all right, Commander?”

“Oooof course,” she said, drawing out the of with her uncertainty. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because you’ve been sitting here for hours, sir, watching a comet shower when, as I recall, the General directed you to your quarters,” he pointed out as if it was obvious, which it was.

“I, um, couldn’t sleep,” she said in a miffed tone of voice and looked back towards the ray shield. Big mistake. A huge comet bounced off the shield and she averted her gaze. 

Rex glanced towards the shards of falling comet, then back at the Commander, and put two and two together. He twitched his helmet, which he had positioned in the crook of his arm, towards the ray shield. “Comet storm got you on edge?”

“No. Why would you say that?” she replied defensively.

“Auuuuugh, Commander . . .”

“Alright, alright,” she gave up, exasperated. “The comets — just freak me out a little, is all. I’ve never been in a storm like this. They kind of remind me of droid fire.” 

She kept her tone as casual as she could, but Rex was clearly unconvinced. He gave her a smile anyway and beckoned for her to get down from the ship.

“Where to?” she queried.

“I think you could use an escort back to your quarters, sir,” he said.

She shook her head adamantly. “Uh-uh. Not going to happen. Sorry, Captain. It gets worse in my room. I tried to sleep in there for ages.”

“Well . . . come down from there anyway,” he insisted. “Lonely up there, on a ship, watching the comets, can’t be good for you if you’re afraid of them. I’m making rounds anyway. Care to join me?”

“Well, I . . . sure,” she said reluctantly. She was really too tired to go, but she was his commanding officer, so she had to look like she wasn’t. She unfolded her legs and slipped off the ship, landing light as a cat, and joined him. He watched with a knowing smirk and began to lead her out of the hangar.

“So, how do you do it, Captain?” she asked, stifling a yawn as they went. “Be on your feet for so many hours? Is it like in your conditioning?”

“Got it in one, sir,” he said as they patrolled the dark corridors. “We go through extensive training on Kamino. Much like your own training, I expect. The difference is probably in our sizes. You’re a tad smaller than me.

“Just you wait,” she joked. “Someday, I’ll be taller than you.”

He only snorted. “We’ll see.”

He was being unusually relaxed, Ahsoka noted, trailing him slightly rather than walking by his side. He had been all formalities in their prior work. 

“Shouldn’t you not make fun of your commanding officer?” she observed.

She saw his eyebrows bend — was that annoyance she saw? — and his posture became slightly stiffer. “All due respect, Commander. Well, ah, permission to speak freely?”

“Yes, of course,” she said suspiciously.

“We’ll see if you ever become taller than me,” he repeated in a tone of finely distilled sarcasm. Ahsoka couldn’t believe her ears, then she laughed.

“A sarcastic jokester for a master and captain. How will I survive,” she said. 

“You’ll fit right in.”

She hadn’t noticed that they’d been aiming for her quarters, which were located a safe distance away from the trooper barracks and half a hallway down from her master’s room. Rex fitted his clearance card to the keypad and the door slid open with a hiss of hydraulics.

“You have a card to my room?” she said disbelievingly.

“It’s strictly for safety precautions, sir. I also have a card to the General’s room, and your card provides you clearance to the General and the barracks. Most of our rooms remain unlocked on the regular, anyway.”

Still suspicious, she dawdled in the doorway. “Captain, I —”

She looked rather small and scared to him still, and at that opportune moment a comet rocked the ship overhead again. The automatic lighting within her quarters flickered.

“Commander, try to get some sleep,” he encouraged gently.

“I tried before and it didn’t work,” she said, casting her eyes down. “I’d rather — I’d rather keep making the rounds with you.”

“I highly recommend you stay here, although I can’t dissuade you from coming with me.”

He couldn’t. She insisted on remaining with him. Shaking his head, Rex made short work of the rest of the rounds, with distracting the Commander long enough to get her to her room no longer on his list. He eventually took her back to the hangar after learning her disinclination for food, lightsaber practice, and the data library. It seemed she just wanted to be in a spot where she could watch the comets, terrifying as they were to her. It made little sense to him, but then again, very little about this little Padawan did.

He himself wasn’t too tired, so he sat down on a heap of cargo boxes by the ship with her for what he told himself could only be a minute. It was impossible to not note how exhausted she appeared. Her head kept drooping as if she was about to sleep, although her eyes remained steadfastly trained on the storm.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said, then remembered she was scared of the comets.

“I suppose it is,” she agreed in a sleep-slurred voice.

He sat there with her, keeping a concerned eye lest she fall over. And he was glad he did, for only a few minutes passed by before her head dropped to his shoulder and, at last, stayed put.

He’d told himself he was only going to be there for a minute or two. But the comets were very lovely, and he couldn’t risk waking the Commander just yet. She needed time to slip into a deeper sleep. And though he’d also told himself he wasn’t too tired, the rocking of the ship felt lulling to him, and Ahsoka was breathing very softly and rhythmically, and the hangar lights had dimmed . . .

Rex awoke to a particularly close comet screeching almost perpendicularly to the ray shield, sending up large flakes of debris behind it. His hand went to his blaster automatically, then he calmed. Only then did he realize Ahsoka was still on his shoulder, thankfully still sleeping.

The hangar was empty. It was time for her to go to her quarters. 

“Oh, kid,” he said softly, and he had to ease an arm beneath her legs and around her shoulders, and lifted her. Her lekku stubs tickled his arm as they flopped in the air. 

The route to her cabin was quick to retrace. He tried to carry her gently as he could, moving slow and light like he was carrying something precious, conscious of how defenseless she seemed and how much he suddenly seemed to need to protect her because of that. 

Regardless of the necessity for his actions, Rex felt very grateful that he didn’t run into any clone troopers on the way back to her quarters. He lay her on her cot and gave her sleeping form an affectionate half-smile, then returned to the barracks, where unfortunately he was told that he’d been seen sleeping with Commander Tano in the hangar by none other than new recruit Fives, to whom he swiftly gave a talking-to.


	2. all the times

The hail of blaster bolts blurred into rainfall; the fleet of cruisers were overtaken by sailing crows; screams and explosive bursts morphed into the gentle hum of conversation, punctuated by the occasional barked order or half-hysterical laugh. The sunlight grayed into a rocky cloudscape before a jagged and glorious sunset pierced the veil of the heavens and bathed the camp, the machinery, the blood, and the corpses in a soft rose-colored light. 

Grimy orange hands closed and flipped over, then stretched, showing off dusty fingers. Ahsoka inspected her scarred knuckles with a sense of budding dismay. She wasn’t often concerned with her looks much, or even her hygiene — no more than the strict necessities she’d been drilled to observe by the Crèche instructors, anyway; and she obviously knew enough to take good care of herself when she had the time; which is part of why she was absolutely disgusted with the state of her nails.

“Commander?”

Ahsoka glanced up.

Denal was squatting at her side, a smile glimmering in his handsome cheeks. “Whatcha looking at?”

“My nails,” she replied after a moment’s hesitation. Denal, more than the other clones — of whom most were newer than Denal to the 501st — treated her with all the care as well as all the _sass_ of an older brother. As a consequence of the latter, Ahsoka did not overmuch want to share her hygiene woes with him.

He seemed to have other plans in mind, however.

“Your _nails_? What, is there an inch of them left uncovered with mud for you to inspect?”

“Easy for you to say. You wear gloves, like, all the time. You sure you even have nails still under there?” Ahsoka retorted.

“If Jango had ‘em, I have ‘em. But dirt’s a good look on you, Commander. You were looking awfully like a shiny earlier.”

“It’s hardly my first campaign, Denal,” Ahsoka protested. He really _was_ insufferable at times.

“No. It’s your second,” Denal laughed.

Ahsoka gave up with a groan. 

“It’s okay, Commander. You’ll get used to feeling filthy in time,” Denal comforted.

“That’s just the problem. I don’t _like_ it. It’s uncomfortable. I don’t want to get used to feeling . . . this way. The Temple was so clean,” Ahsoka ruminated.

After a moment she glanced sideways at Denal, just in time to catch a twinkling light appear in his brown eyes.

“What are you up to, Denal?” she asked suspiciously.

“I have just the thing, Commander. Have you ever been Coruscant-side . . . what am I saying, of course you have. Well. Last time I was Coruscant-side . . . the only time . . . I was looking up armor and tat inspiration. It was before I’d gotten inked and painted, you see.” He waggled his painted vambraces at her.

“I’m _not_ getting a tattoo. That’s not going to make me feel cleaner.”

“What’s this about tattoos?” sounded a startlingly close-by voice, and Attie, who had spoken, dropped to the ground, followed by Zeer and Echo — the newish recruit who still felt rather on the fringe of things in the Five-Oh-First and who currently looked shyly pleased at being included with the survivors of the battle of Teth . . . and the Commander. 

“I’m getting a tattoo,” Attie proudly announced, yanking off a glove and rolling up his sleeve. He indicated the length of his forearm. “Tomorrow. Rancor, from Wildfire Company, is a real pro inker . . . done half the boys in Wildfire. He’s drawing me a rancor. He thinks it’s fitting.”

Echo laughed at that. Denal sneered.

“Everyone gets rancors, Attie,” said Denal. “It’s hardly anything cool anymore. Just shows that you’re basic as all get-out.”

Ahsoka was tempted to muse over a clone trying to be anything _but_ basic, but a pang of conscience and consideration stopped her.

“I’m not getting a tattoo,” she insisted again. “But, Denal. You were going to show me something.”

“That I was, Commander.” He fished something out from his battle-skirt and held it up, proudly, for inspection. 

“Check out . . . _this_ baby.”

Ahsoka checked it out. It was a tiny, little, distinctly unspecial green bottle.

“And this is?” she said in a tone of finely distilled sarcasm.

“‘And this is’, she says,” said Denal in an injured voice. “ _This_ is a special tool of decoration. It’s like armor paint, but made especially for the body. But it comes off! Easier than tattoo ink, anyway. _And_ easier to apply than pen ink. It’s remarkable. I mean, Commander, you can’t just say ‘ _and this is_ ’ . . . _this_ is nail polish.”

He flourished it. Ahsoka laughed outright.

“Nail polish?”

Denal grinned. “Nail polish! And for only five and a half credits per a bottle. Got some weird looks buying it, though. Lot of . . . little girls . . . about the store I bought it at,” he remarked, scooching closer to Ahsoka. “But. Want to try it out?”

Ahsoka checked to see if he was in earnest. Oddly enough, he seemed to be. 

“Okay,” she said cautiously.

Ahsoka knew what nail polish was, of course. She’d even used it once in her life. Trilla — a friend back in the Crèche — had gone through a fashion phase that she’d pulled Ahsoka into as well, and while Ahsoka had never been quite as heavily invested as Trilla had, she had been willing to join Trilla in clothes shopping and clip-on earring and nail polish fads. 

While her own experience with nail polish was minor at best, she _highly_ doubted that Denal had anywhere near as much as she did. For this reason, she refused to let Denal apply the polish to her nails at first, instead doing it herself. But her hands were unsteady and she couldn’t properly reach her thumb with her other, already-painted fingers, awkwardly extended.

“Just let me do it,” complained Denal. The other clones encouraged her to allow Denal. Zeer, Del, Nax, Boro, and several more had joined the cluster of watching clones.

Ahsoka eyed him apprehensively, then, with an anxious feeling, relented. The clones and she scooted over to a nearby bedroll matt left alone on the ground by a backpack and several personal effects — ones that Echo and Del obliviously brushed aside, so Ahsoka and Denal could have a flat space to work upon.

Denal took Ahsoka’s hand in his, and finished her thumb off with hands just as quivery as she had expected.

“Denal, you’re getting paint all over my fingers,” she giggled. 

Denal raised a teasing eyebrow at her. “Maybe that’s where I want it. Or here. Or here.” He dabbed at her forearms, and Ahsoka laughed and flinched as her arms chilled and the vinegary scent stung her nose.

“Cut that out,” she smiled, shoving him.

“Here,” intervened a voice. The assembled clones looked up, startled, as Coric leaned down. Echo’s hand went automatically to a salute and Denal squared his shoulders in a more formal pose, but Coric gave them a peremptory nod only before turning to Ahsoka. 

“Here, ma’am,” he said with very stately authority. “You need a medic’s steady hands.”

He shooed Denal out of the way and squatted in front of her. A still-giggly Ahsoka gave him her hand. Coric noted the paint on her arms and added a smiley face to the underside of her orange wrist before going to work on her nails.

“See, you’ve got to get just up to the cuticles,” he said severely. The other clones were observing with extreme interest. Denal had his chin propped up in a hand and was watching with such great concentration that his brow formed a V.

“Wow, Sarge, did they teach you this on Kamino, or —” started Denal, breaking the quiet.

Ahsoka burst out laughing again while Coric began a snappy retort.

“Soldiers!”

The bark rang out over all the other identical voices, like an oddly aggressive echo. Ahsoka fell silent, and so did Coric and Denal, a guilty smile settling on their faces. 

“Soldiers,” repeated Rex, stalking magnanimously into the midst of the clones while the crowded soldiers parted to let him through. There was a brief silence as Rex stared at Ahsoka — her hand in Coric’s — bright green paint staining her fingers. 

After an _awful_ moment Rex continued.

“I just spent two hours on paperwork for your sorry arses,” he said in a voice as angry as Ahsoka had ever heard it, “and then took a walkthrough through camp, and Torrent’s looking uglier than a nerfherder’s backside. _Sergeant_ Coric” — Coric jumped and a somewhat frightened Ahsoka bit back another laugh in spite of herself — “ _get your boys back to camp_ , or I’ll have you and your men on latrine maintenance duty all next campaign.”

Ahsoka hadn’t even known latrine maintenance duty was a _thing_. At least Rex hadn’t mentioned the nail polish.

“Sir, yes sir,” cried out Coric in chorus with Attie, Zeer, Del, Denal, Nax, Echo, Boro, Ince, Vere, Oz, and Koho. Coric at last dropped her hand, setting the nail polish down gently, and left her with a friendly poke to her shoulder. 

“Try to calm him down,” he advised in a low voice.

Ahsoka made panicked eyes at Coric. 

“Trust me, out of all of us you’d probably do best —” and then Coric was off. In a short space of time, Ahsoka was left with just the nail polish, the angry Captain, and the lovely sunset for company. 

“Captain,” Ahsoka said with a brave stab at cheeriness.

“Commander,” he responded with great dignity.

Ahsoka resisted laughter once more and indicated the black matt she sat upon. “Care to join me?”

Rex shuffled a few steps closer to her, as if he was waiting for her to stand up — but Ahsoka wasn’t about to rise. Why didn’t he just sit down with her? A little crossly, she packed up the nail polish. Her nails had just about dried, anyway.

“What is that, Commander?” Rex asked with curiosity. His helmet was clipped to his belt; he flicked it toward the little green bottle by way of indicating it.

“Nail paint,” Ahsoka answered promptly. “It’s just a . . . thing to pass the time.”

“Ah.”

Ahsoka tucked her knees up into her chest and clasped her hands about them. One _had_ to break the silence, so . . .

“It’s so beautiful,” she said finally, gesturing to the incomparable masterpiece that constituted the sunset sky. “And ugly,” she added after a moment’s thought, lowering her eyes towards the churned-up, bloodstained landscape.

“It’s a battlefield, little one,” Rex said. Ahsoka noted his choice of words — gentler than his usual _kid_. 

She then noted the muffled sorrow in his voice, as if his anger was fading . . . showing the reasons behind it. Perhaps Coric’s parting sentence had been true.

“You okay, Captain?” she said cautiously, rotating to look at Rex and where he stood, framed by the crimson and gold of the sunset’s majesty.

Rex turned his head a fraction. Red light spilled across his face as he turned to face her, blinking into the dying sunlight to peer down at her with a — a — well, Ahsoka couldn’t tell _what_ exactly was shimmering in his soft golden-brown eyes, but it made her feel something she had never felt before. She quailed under Rex’s gaze.

“Of course, sir,” Rex murmured.

That was _certainly_ not all, and Ahsoka knew it.

“As your commanding officer, I order you to tell me what’s wrong,” Ahsoka tried.

Well, _that_ was amusement, now entering his eyes. Rex ran a hand over his face and seemed to give in. 

He squatted down with a rustle as his plastoid boots grinded into the dust.

“I’m just tired, Commander,” he said, emphasizing her title with a hint of snark behind his words before discarding the undertone. “It’s been a long campaign, and I’ve spent several hours just now going over reports. It’s tough, with all the normal business, but also all these shinies to corral.”

“And there are so many shinies right now since the battalion had to be replaced after . . . Teth?”

The name hesitantly left Ahsoka’s tongue and she at once regretted her words. Rex’s eyes flashed and he responded solemnly.

“Yes.”

There was a brief silence, during which Ahsoka experienced the agony of pure awkwardness.

“I think about that battle all the time,” she breathed into the fading light.

Rex looked at her with surprise.

A strange feeling of courage emboldened Ahsoka, and she continued, feeling that she could comfort the Captain.

“I’d just started with the Five-Oh-First. And the battle felt like . . . so much fun. I loved getting to test my skills, and do something worthwhile, and just . . . get away from the Temple, I suppose.”

She could tell that Rex was growing rather impatient with her rambling, despite all his calm listening.

“But halfway through the battle . . . just exiting the monastery, with the Huttlet in tow . . . I looked around and I realized how _so many_ of the people around me were _dying.”_

At the last her words came out in a rush. Ahsoka sat, miserable and silent, feeling so painfully _young._ Tears pricked at her eyes. Rex remained quite quiet, and she felt sure that he was pitying her in her weakness — her youth — her stupid way of voicing what she felt or her stupidity in feeling this way at _all_ . How had she been so happy only a few minutes ago? Rex had ruined the moment. _No_. What a disloyal thought! He had just summoned reality back into her thoughts, a reality that plagued him during long hours filing casualty reports, a reality she pushed away like a coward, instead of facing like a Jedi would. She put a hand to her face and her painted fingers came away damp with tears. Rex was still looking at her.

Truth be told, poor Rex didn’t know quite how to feel, or what to do. It felt rather wrong to pity a superior officer, yet here he sat beside a crying fourteen-year-old . . . baby. _She was just a little girl_ . Oh. _Oh_. Yes, it was pity welling up inside him, and understanding, and the sorrow he’d carried with him since his cadet days that he only allowed himself to feel sometimes . . . but that Ahsoka seemed to be in the thrills of now. He reached out an uncertain hand and placed it upon the Commander’s shoulder.

She stiffened somewhat at the contact, but he didn’t remove his hand. 

“It’s tough, Commander,” he ventured after a moment. “Especially when you’re new to commanding. People suffer and die in the name of a good cause, and it hurts to be up close. But I have faith in the cause we fight for.

“Not that it makes it much easier,” he said softly. “And not that it ever gets easier. But . . .”

Was there even a but? 

All of a sudden, a pair of skinny, green-striped arms threw themselves around his neck.

“Thanks for understanding, Captain,” spoke a tiny voice into his neck. “I’m sorry to bore you with all this. But I’m glad . . . well, I’m not _glad_. . . but, y’know . . . you understand, at least. So thanks for helping.”

“You’re welcome,” Rex said awkwardly into the open air over her montrals.

After a rather strange moment, Ahsoka disengaged, and Rex looked down at her. Ahsoka saw golden kindness in his eyes.

“Now, sir, with all due respect, I’d recommend you get some sleep,” he told her.

“I’m not tired,” she insisted at once. She was a little, but she didn’t want to exchange Rex’s company for the fear and bad dreams of her own tent. 

“Well, you’re sitting on my bedroll, so forgive me if I don’t believe you,” said Rex.

Ahsoka let out a tiny gasp.

All at once everything made sense — just why Rex had found her and the clones so soon after finishing his work —and why he hadn’t departed after sending off the shinies — and maybe even a bit about why he was so annoyed when he’d walked up, for now there was dried green paint flecked all over his bedroll. Chagrined, Ahsoka slid off the black matt and onto the scratchy ground, catching the bottle in her hands and tucking it back into her battle-skirt pocket.

“Well, settle down, Rex. I don’t want to keep you up. I’ll just go and find my tent.”

Rex followed orders while Ahsoka didn’t do as she said she was going to. The Captain quirked an eyebrow at her.

“Commander?”

“I’m not tired,” she said again, looking away and up at the stars. She wasn’t big on admitting fear — even to the best of audiences, which Rex, of course, was — when he wasn’t grumpy. 

“Well, neither am I,” huffed Rex. “But I’m not going to fall asleep with you sitting here.”

“Why not?”

“It’s . . .” Rex apparently couldn’t find words that weren’t a snub. Ahsoka understood this and replied with a half-ashamed roll of her eyes. Nevertheless, she and Rex chatted about the campaign and nail polish for a few minutes until Ahsoka uttered a tremendous yawn.

“Commander, off to bed,” Rex instructed, eyes half-shut already.

Her bedroll felt oh so far away, and she didn’t want to get up and go . . .

The Captain’s eyes were closed. Ahsoka called Rex’s name softly, and he didn’t respond.

“Tired, Captain?” Ahsoka murmured to herself. She looked on fondly while Rex’s chest settled into a slow and rhythmic rise and fall. His plastoid looked unappealingly tough, but Rex was appealingly _Rex_. Exhaustion was already clinging so strongly to Ahsoka’s nerves that it was no great difficulty to ignore her pricking conscience and unfurl her bed roll beside Rex, settle her body in as comfortable a way as possible over the lumpy earth, and press her face into Rex’s pauldron in order to block out the bright lights and hustle and bustle of the camp.

A warm haze slipped over her and she slipped wonderfully, sweetly into the sleep of the exhausted.

* * *

“Kid. _Psst._ Hey, kid.”

She didn’t want to wake up.

“Kid! Commander.”

A familiar voice tugged insistently at her nerves. Who was that? Rex. No, wait. It could be any one of the clones. But it was Rex. Probably. Where was she? Her muscles were aching; she was lying upon rocky, lumpy ground. Gray light pressed against her eyelids, pleading to slip through her lashes. She didn’t want to open them.

“Kid.”

Reluctantly, Ahsoka peeled her eyes open and sat up with a catlike stretch, green fingers grasping at the air. 

“Rexter?”

It was barely dawn. The sun had not yet peeked above the horizon, and predawn mist filled her senses. Yet here was Rex, eyes alert and clear, kneeling in front of her with one gloved hand on her shoulder. 

“General Skywalker’s calling for you,” he whispered. “Command tent. We’re to go over the next phase of the campaign.”

“So soon?”

Rex winced at the loudish volume of her voice. Ahsoka removed her focus from Rex and took in her surroundings for the first time. When she did, she gave a tiny gasp, and started to helplessly laugh, although she fought to keep herself as quiet as she could.

Surrounding her and Rex, locked in the deepest slumber and in a cozy tangle of legs and arms and mussed-up hair, were Denal, Coric, Attie, Echo, and hundreds of other sleeping clones. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a MESS of ideas all hodgepodged into one. i wrote the end first, then the beginning, then the conversation with rex and ahsoka, then the nail polish part and edited it about two minutes ago, at 1:30am. so it’s not very coherent. nevertheless, enjoy, and as usual please drop an R&R if you feel like it!


End file.
